


Choking on the Smoke of Unthinkable Choices

by lodessa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-15
Updated: 2006-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1923150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salazar brushed past me as he entered the bedchamber. I longed to reach out to him, but instead I bit my lip and said nothing instead. Too many nights ended this way now. Godric would have a bit too much mead, and Salazar goaded him on; until, it was all Rowena and I could do to keep the students from. Salazar didn’t express rage like Godric. Instead he kept it bottled just under the surface, until his skin practically crawled with it. I remembered when we were younger, how many seasons it had taken me to convince him that I wasn’t going to use anything he told me against him, that I wouldn’t use his tears as collateral, long after he’d let me into his bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choking on the Smoke of Unthinkable Choices

Salazar brushed past me as he entered the bedchamber. I longed to reach out to him, but instead I bit my lip and said nothing instead. Too many nights ended this way now. Godric would have a bit too much mead, and Salazar goaded him on; until, it was all Rowena and I could do to keep the students from. Salazar didn’t express rage like Godric. Instead he kept it bottled just under the surface, until his skin practically crawled with it. I remembered when we were younger, how many seasons it had taken me to convince him that I wasn’t going to use anything he told me against him, that I wouldn’t use his tears as collateral, long after he’d let me into his bed. Sometimes I felt like we are still in the same place as we were then; the way I hesitated and felt unsure of myself around him. It was growing again, that nervous flutter and weakening nausea of anxiety. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t, that things had always been like this with Salazar and weren’t getting worse, that he wasn’t colder and more distant than he was a year before. It wasn’t our relationship that was fading, making me nervous, I told myself, it was just the disagreements with Godric. My discomfort with conflict was practically legendary. I had to believe that the problems lay only in the relationship between the two men, and not between me and Salazar.

Upstairs Godric was laughing, quick to forget the smart of the quarrel. Salazar, however, was not so quick to let go of his rage. Looking over at him, I sternly reminded myself that it was not me he was angry with and not my fault his gaze held no softness. Rowena would doubtless have counseled me to leave Salazar be when he was like this, but I could not help feeling that in these times it was important to show Salazar that I loved him, despite his mood, regardless of how hard he worked to keep me away.

“Sal…” I murmured quietly, taking half a step toward him.

“I don’t want to hear it, Helga,” he snapped, turning away from me. He’d been more and more reclusive, more quickly offended. It almost felt like he wanted to be displeased with me, wanted an excuse to storm off and stay away until the wee hours of the morning.

“Salazar, I wasn’t going to; don’t you know me better than that?”

He ought to have. Over the years we’d spent together, he should really have learned that I wasn’t going to kick him when he was down. His next words betrayed that it wasn’t what he thought I’d say that he was upset about, though; it was what I wasn’t saying, “I know you well enough to know you think he’s right.”

I couldn’t say that I didn’t agree with Godric about the issue, but I wasn’t about to make things worse than they already were. Salazar had his reasons for feeling the way he did, and I wasn’t about to give him any more excuse to decide that he was being persecuted. It had been badly done on Godric’s part to bring the topic up at all.

“Godric shouldn’t have said what he did…”

That much was true. Especially that bit about Salazar’s mother, even if she was a despicable excuse for a human being, had been completely uncalled for. But Godric had never known where to stop.

“But last week, when it was Rowena, but she kept her voice down and her face expressionless… that was okay?” Salazar spat.

I groaned inwardly. He wanted to pick a fight, and so he was backing me into a corner, pressing me to either declare everyone else wrong, or to argue with him. To appease him would have been easier, but it would have been a lie.

“They’re entitled to their opinions Salazar, just as you are.” I sighed, sitting down in resignation, “Can’t you see that stifling their voices would be doing the same wrong that so outrages you?”

Salazar turned to face me, but his expression was cold. “Everyone can’t be right Helga, not matter how much you want us all to be.”

I could have pointed out that he was repressing my views and limiting my freedom by making that declaration. It would merely make him more defensive though, if such a thing was possible “We’ve been over this a thousand times. I love you, and I understand your point of view, but Salazar… that’s just not the way I am.”

“The way you are is bleeding you dry. You are going to have to pick a side eventually, you know.”

I knew he meant it to be a testament of his affection for me that he was concerned, and it was. But just because it was well intentioned didn’t mean it wasn’t a harmful idea.

“Picking sides never led to anything good, and I can’t. I can’t agree with you that they don’t belong here, but I could never turn on you Sal, whatever happens.”

My tone was conciliatory, but it seemed to anger him as if I were insulting him the way Godric had done upstairs. His reaction was, is anything, more volatile.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he insisted. “I will not stand for their contempt, and the day is going to come-”

“Maybe if you forgot this choosing a side nonsense it wouldn’t have to.” I interrupted, placing my hands around his.

“So it’s nonsense now?” Salazar hissed, pulling away.

“Yes, it is.” I was tired of failed peace offerings, and whatever I said he would twist into something insulting. Besides, I couldn’t help feeling that Salazar should be able to compromise, to work things out, for the sake of our relationship if nothing else. “All this fighting and drawing lines in the metaphorical dirt is nonsense and juvenile stupidity.”

“So I’m immature and foolish?” Salazar seemed almost gleeful to have gotten me to criticize him.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. But the way you twisted my words around to the worst possible interpretation is what I am talking about. Lay down your sword, Salazar. I am not the enemy-”

“But you embrace the enemy none the less,” he accused, with all the venom of a jealous youth.

“Godric isn’t your enemy either. Sal…” I sighed, putting my finger to his lips to quiet the argument I knew was coming, “You two may disagree on some points, and he might be a tactless oaf much of the time, but you used to be like brothers and he’s still a good person… even if he doesn’t always behave like it. You’ve made mistakes too, you know.”

“If you’re so fond of Godric, why aren’t you up there feasting with him, instead of down here with me? Thoth knows, it’s not as if there’s anything keeping you here.”

He had absolutely no reason to think Godric was a threat to our relationship, but Salazar was always a paranoid and resentful man. Besides, it wasn’t about romantic infidelity; it was about choosing sides, just like the whole rest of the conversation had been. I had to remind myself of these things; his apparent pain reached me far too easily. I knew perfectly well he wouldn’t let me provide him any solace. But I always wanted to comfort him, even when I was the one he was attacking.

I swallowed painfully, “You say these things merely to hurt me. I know you don’t actually believe I prefer Godric to you. I love you Salazar, and the fact that you’re upset because I don’t agree with you about everything doesn’t change my feelings in the slightest.”

“You’ll turn on me one day… just like everyone else,” Salazar half whispered, and it was like he was a young boy once more, lonely and scared.

“No,” I insisted, standing up and placing one hand on each side of his face to look into his eyes, “I won’t.”

I wanted to clutch him to my breast, and reassure him that everything was going to be all right, rock him to sleep with a lullaby. This conversation, too, was far to commonplace for us.

“I’ll drive you to it, Helga. In the end you’ll have to choose, and you’ll choose Godric and Rowena, and the welfare of the school and the little mudbloods you cherish so much. You’ll decide it’s the solution that makes the most people happy. So, you’ll sacrifice everything we have, for what you’re naïve enough to think is the greater good.”

The tears that I’d been choking back started to overrun my face as his certainty about the inevitability of tragedy hit me. Even worse was the little voice in my head that suspected that this was primarily an act, that he was not fearful of my abandoning him, but rather attempting to instigate it.

“Why do you wish to push me away Salazar? If you grow weary of me, simply say so,” I managed to say. I was unsure of whether I hoped that was it, or whether I was praying for it not to be.

My own doubt and worry seemed to reach Salazar at last. “Now you are the one being fatalistic and irrational,” he replied, reaching his arms out to draw me to him. I felt the knots in my stomach loosen as he encircled me. “Out of the whole wide world, you are the one person I assuredly am not weary of.”

He crushed his mouth against mine, as if to prove his claim, and I wanted to believe that this would be the end of the issue, and we would be fine from now on. I couldn’t stop his words from echoing in my head though. I was unnerved by the harshness of his voice when he claimed that I would believe siding against him would lead to happiness in general, the way he sounded like he knew something I didn’t. I pushed the thought aside as he undressed me with the practice of many years, his touch so familiar and yet still so deeply longed for.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he murmured, as he blew out the candle, lowering our bodies down to the bed. But the unspoken modifier, the one that undercut the meaning of the claim, hung in the air like the promise of an electrical storm, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the lighting stuck. Still I held him close, and prayed that I was wrong. Support and acceptance might finally wear his rage and hostility down, so that he could choose love over vengeance. On some level I knew it wasn’t so, that he was getting worse and not better, but I needed to believe that it was possible. I needed to believe that the man I loved could win out over the monstrous hated that bubbled within him. Because, if I couldn’t save him, if we provided such an unsteady foundation, what chance of a better future could there be for this castle built on our hope?


End file.
